Our Separate Ways
by CosmicProphet
Summary: Reflections on the partnership of Natasha and Clint. Canon includes films and comics .
1. Prologue

It was in moments like these that he almost believed that there was nothing that really mattered save the steady rise and fall of her breathing, the way she stirred in her sleep. Nothing at all was quite as worthwhile as his hand lazily running through her hair, their adventures paled. Seeing her stroll down the roads of Chicago, self-assured and beautiful; the way he had slipped through, under, beneath, and into the heart of Manhattan in the hunt for dark-eyed men; wild syndicates in the shifting sewers called Tokyo's corporate towers. Even the fire and dance of Budapest-a story they taunted each other with in casual, playful comments like they would ever honestly discuss that odd, painful time again didn't compare. These things seemed so tiny and remote when they were tangled together beneath an old quilt, he peering out the window as the fireflies flickered.

He wanted to caress her hair for hours, he wanted to sleep and know she would rise lazily, cat-like, in the morning. Still with him, still tranquil. And he hated to know that he would instead awaken with an aching neck, disheveled, alone, her drinking coffee in the kitchen and reviewing the next mission debriefing.

Maybe it's a mission for both of them, maybe not.

He hated more that he wanted her aloofness, that he craved the loneliness, the chasing back and forth. Ash and soot smeared across her doll-like face, his witty comments as he turned to watch her leave, to follow the swing of her hips. Just the usual. Violence and sex and "love's for children, I'm clearing my ledger, Barton" like hey babe, what about that janitor's closet in Riga three weeks ago? What about the way you _looked_ at me? Is that kid stuff, those green eyes and my heart caught spinning like an ice skater, thirty-eight years all slipped away in a coy smile, soft hands? Is your ledger smeared with the sounds of your hands knotted in _my hair?_

But he couldn't live with her all domestic either, auburn locks pulled back and tending the sunflowers while the kids are at the pool. Because what the hell was the point of a tiger declawed? Pacing and snapping his gummy jaws, flexing loose skin? She was beautiful and alluring and he was quick, strong-but not in love. Just all muscles taut, sinews stretched, the two of them on edge every living second of the movie theatre and the bedroom and her humming Russian songs as she bathed, him lying on the floor pretending to do sit-ups or crunches but really wondering about Budapest, it always goes back to fucking Budapest. They were tangled and strangled like that; cause he was _not _in love with her strikingly red hair, her laugh, her accent (vague, muted, but there nonetheless no matter how she hid it during missions), her smile. How it went from his eyes clawing down her body, stripping her naked like he wasn't even worried she could do a thing till she broke his nose and he replaced his smugness with a bloody shit-eating grin, "So you like it rough, huh?" This was how they ran in circles, snapping at their own heels, biting tails in a bizarre mating ritual that their friends didn't quite get.

Steve was all about this chivalry stuff which Clint was pretty sure must have been French for too-much-money-to-waste-on-dinners and girls-are-too-weak-to-open-doors (though he kept that to himself when around the supersoldier, Barton had a smart mouth and didn't want it broken). Stark was a smooth, sauntering kind of guy that Clint vaguely idolized, how his face now ran rivers of faint wrinkles but women still blinked, and giggled, and fanned themselves silly in his presence. Must have been the money. Thor was loud, confident, blonde hair, and a beaming smile. He had no trouble with women, even those Stark led away because they would be "too much trouble for our favorite Ken doll, I'll handle them". And when they lightly nudged about the beautiful Natasha (or hottie, redhead, Russian, Anastasia, sexy, cat girl-was it the leather?-, Nat, and worst of all Tasha which was **_his own_ **name for her) he just tossed out a smirk and let them know who exactly was fucking the bombshell and that they met on business, even once letting it spill nonchalantly that he was out on work to murder the fine broad. That earned some raised eyebrows and a brief cluster of men around the coffee machine at HQ. Funny how things seemed to always run back to Budapest.


	2. Chapter 1

He likes women. He liked women from the first awkward, fumbling night when a young lady crept into his room after the circus and _he became a man. _Or something like that, certainly an embarrassing sweetness that made him giddier and more eager than ever to flash a few smiles while on the floor of the circus. He likes women like he likes archery; they're smooth like the release of the arrow, sharp eyes, bullseye when they smile. So he's a sap, but at least he's an honest man—maybe that was the problem. He broke away, wild and somehow still hopeful even after his master was a crook and his brother had forsaken him, still so confident. You'd think that would be a benefit. Not really.

You can't be soft and optimistic and proud and try to fight crime too, it doesn't work. He thought it would but the dirty streets and the violence—they all crawled inside of his head and ate him from the inside out. He had no family to go home to, the circus a loveless disease, no wealth to drown in, no women but the ones he found smoking under streetlamps. And though he tried to do well, he fumbled and found himself on the wrong side of prison bars instead. The police mistook him for a common crook and though he ran from that identity he couldn't stay that way for long; grit and nastiness penetrated his thoughts and for a while it became so much easier to play on that side of the line, taking money to do jobs that may or may not have fallen in his moral code. Who cared? Things slipped inside him and settled there silently. She woke them up.

Her name was Natasha. She was beautiful and sharp and so brilliant that when she pulled him close and sweetened his mind with suggestions he was gone. _Bam,_ baby, gone. They fought and stole and killed a bit, her gorgeous smiles and his smirks smearing the city a little worse with every passing night. He wanted her every day because when she was around things were electric, things were better even as they got worse. She taught him to use technologically enhanced arrows (something he can't live without now) and he taught her a little bit about the gullibility of love-struck men. When they tried to break into Stark Tower and steal tech, she disappeared and he ran dry of that lifestyle. Clint had no choice but to forge a better path from his degradation (and heart-break).

And then there was the Avengers; authority, team work, and Stark (hey man, you're not still upset over that little fiasco, are you?). Fuck that shit. He hated the rules and the obligations; he hated himself shifting from young and hopeful to a full grown dark horse with a bad attitude who hits on everything with breasts. Damn, how proud his mom would be! Tony sneered about not working well with others, but they all knew that was a Clint thing. Isolated up hundreds of feet above railings or industrial buildings or political officials' houses. Skulking out in the dark for men he used to be; Clint Barton, the one-shot-wonder pouting alone with his bow and arrows.

And Natasha came around, in between her rounds with the handsome heroes out on the west coast, they had something great Clint wanted to believe but it was all missions and sex and that awoke something dark again, the silent serpents in the back of his head. When he heard brother died Clint thought he'd rot away inside altogether, but then he met _her _and things shattered so completely there wasn't anything he could joke about with the guys at HQ.

They called the sultry blonde Mockingbird, but he preferred to call his Barbara, _Bobbi_.


End file.
